Michele Bachmann First Candidate To Sign Pledge To Ban Porn And Same-Sex Marriage

Michele Bachmann became the first presidential candidate to sign a pledge, vowing to support a constitutional amendment that defines marriage between a man and a woman, and which calls for a ban on all pornography.

“The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family,” sponsored by the Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative organization, equates same-sex marriage with bigamy and polygamy and calls on candidates to promise to be faithful to their spouses.

The two-page pledge includes a “Declaration of Dependence on Marriage and Family” that blames several factors for the deterioration of traditional marriage including “quickie divorce” and unmarried couples living together. The pledge also describes homosexuality as a choice and not genetic.

“This debasement [of marriage] continues as a function of adultery; ‘quickie divorce;’… [and] anti-scientific bias which holds in complete absence of empirical proof that not non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined,” reads the pledge.

Candidates, like Bachmann who sign the pledge, vow “vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage…through statutory, bureaucratic, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex.”

By signing the pledge she supports the idea that homosexuality is a choice, and that being gay is a health risk. Last month, however, she told CBS’ Bob Scheifer that she was “not running to be anyone’s judge.”

“You know, I firmly believe that people need to make their own decisions about that,” she said when asked if being gay was a choice. “But I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge. And that’s where I’m coming from in this race.”

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

So, yea, they’re basically saying that African-Americans were better off under slavery than under Barack Obama, an absurd comment on so many levels that I doubt I really need to point them out, but I think the best response comes from Robert George, a conservative who happens to be African-American, on Twitter:

Indeed, let’s not go there. Furthermore, the statement itself ignores the fact that one of the most common events in a slaves life was to be separate from his family and sold off to another owner. The amount of historical ignorance it requires to even make the statement is, quite honestly, staggering.

Of course, it’s no surprise that Bachmann would make a statement like this. It plays right to her socially conservative, evangelical base. How she cannot see that it turns off every other reasonable Republican I do not know.

Update: There appears to be some disagreement over whether the pledge actually calls for a ban on pornography, and Mediaite makes the counterargument. Here’s the text in question:

Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

One could argue that what they’re really talking about here is protecting women from being used in pornography, I suppose. Of course it’s worth pointing out that the “subjugation of women” argument is now the favored argument of those who favor banning porn, both on the right and among feminists. Additionally, this interpretation would lead one to believe that they have no problem with male homosexual pornography and, somehow, I don’t think that’s quite true.

Yet the pledge would also require signatories to provide “humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy” from “seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.” This depite the fact that promiscuity, pornography, and prostitution, when done right, are engaged in by consenting adult women; that laws already exist to protect children from sex slavery; and that banning adults from engaging in mutually beneficial behavior, or from viewing other adults engaging in mutually beneficial behavior, would be impossible and impossibly expensive, and also harmful to the American adult entertainment industry, which generates tens of billions of dollars per year in taxable revenue.

The pledge also asks candidates to waste time and money on “bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act at the federal and state levels,” and for candidates to extend “second chance” and “cool-down” periods for “those seeking a ‘quickie divorce.'”

In addition to being damn expensive, many of those proposals are not “humane” and would ultimately harm women

About Doug MataconisDoug holds a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May, 2010 and also writes at Below The Beltway.
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Doug, has that organization said that the pledge is meant as a pledge to ban all pornography? I think the language is open to multiple interpretations:

“Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

Read together with its footnote, it’s not clear to me whether this is a call for a all-porn-ban or a reference to coercion of vulnerable women into porn. My first inclination was to believe that the group is censorious, but I’m trying to be open-minded.

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

There’s one more “tell” in there I haven’t seen anyone else pick up on yet. I double-dog dare someone to ask any of the candidates that sing this thing how they feel about the idea of outlawing divorce.

You think I’m crazy (they called me mad at the University!), but that is absolutely the very next signpost on this road – if they get abortion outlawed, divorce is next. That is my official, first-post prediction, and I give even money that the concept will be floated by one of the wackier types – probably Bachmann herself, before Nov 2012. You heard it here first.

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

What fact in the above quote is inaccurate? Don’t any of you all have any reading comprehension skills? How can you possibly come up with the interpretation someone would mean that slavery was good for African Americans?

It is trying to emphasize the point that the black family has fallen apart. My goodness, aren’t you at all embarrased that your partisan hatred trumps basic intelligent thought? Unbelievable.

It m ay well have been true that slaves’ babies were born into a home with both his/her father and mother living together, but laws of the slave states did not require legal recognition of slaves’ marriages as equally valid as between whites (or free blacks, for that matter). Thus were southern slave owners and traders notorious for selling either the mom or the dad to another master, often in another state, without regard for their children. Slaves’ accounts of the period and after the Civil War show that this was one of the worst things slaves endured, in their minds. And because after 1830 it was generally illegal across the slave states to teach slaves to read or write (surprisingly, many were fairly well educated before then), broken-up families were only rarely able even to send letters to one another. Almost always, these forced separations were permanent and total.

It’s not for nothing that the Republicans are often called the Stupid Party.

It’s denial at it’s most obvious example. I think they fail to mention that slaves were not even considered full people and had no vote… the term African-American is a lie when describing them in the same sentence as slaves. The burden of slavery is a scar on the Republic which cannot be undone. The civil rights act was an attempt to correct the inequality which hangs on like a virus. The virus is still with us and Bachmann represents the base.

As a slight correction, there is a rather large group of today’s feminists that are in fact generally pro-porn. The entire feminist “pornography = sexual abuse” hit its nadir in the 80’s and early 90’s (largely as a part of second wave feminism)..

I read the Family Leader pledge and the part that made my head explode was the footnote claiming that the Supreme Court overturned Texas’s sodomy law as part of a plot to violently persecute homosexuals.

What I find amusing is that the same people who worship the Constitution, rather than serve it, are the first to dismiss it as inadequate, requiring increasingly unreasonable litmus tests and oaths for membership. If you are building a congregation that don’t cotton to “that sort of thing,” this is a winning strategery. You can afford to piss people off because you don’t need them anyway.

Regrettably, politics is about building coalitions in order to move your agenda. You have to open the door, not slam it in people’s faces for the most insecure busy-body and childish of reasons. Bachmann conflates government with church, and she is also a charismatic, a dangerous combination.

Everything in this disastrous pledge comes under the heading of “none of your mother loving business,” and it will doom whomever signs it. It will become the litany of questions asked during debates and other forums.

The only oath a politician need worry about is the oath to serve upon being elected. The law does not recognize any other oaths before or after this one.

As for Mr. Bachmann’s equation of gays and barbarians, if we ignore the paucity of burned towns, murders, maimings, raped women and children, and the missing news reports of any “hoards”, unless you count gay pride parades, but I’m here to tell you they do not shoot bullets at these affairs….all of that aside, one theory fits his view better than most: a skunk smells his own hole first.

Lacking legal protection, however, slave families in the United States were fragile. One of the most tragic aspects of slavery was the breakup of families. Even a master who refused to sell family members apart from each other could not always prevent such sales to settle debts after this death. Several studies of slavery have found that from one-fifth to one-third of slave marriages were broken by owners—generally by selling one or both of the partners separately. The percentage of children sold apart from their parents or sibling cannot even be estimated. (James M. McPherson and James K. Hogue. “Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction” (2010), 4th edition, p. 41)

that was a skilled way to end her political career, I am curious to know more of the whole “pledge” thing and who or how it was initially offered to Michele Bachmann …if it was designed by an Obama/Clinton supporter or themselves in order to undermine her favor and gain Obama support-because after reading the pledge, I thought of Oprah and Obama, then Bachmann losing support. Obama won the last election by process of elimination, and he ran a anti-war campaign to control liberals. Had he not expanded the war to Afghanistan, hired Clinton and Biden whom incidentally voted (“yes” we can) to invade Iraq, now still spending 2 billion a WEEK oversea’s while state and federal programs are facing more cuts, arts programs are losing funding and Obama also attacked Libya-I’d say then Obama is a real winner, and deserves the noble peace prize. In the end he’s a decoy candidate- the war machine got what they wanted and Bachmann is a troll and set up. Couldn’t help but wonder if after she is constantly being told how gorgeous she is in blog posts and by others in public- if she wants them to see her as untouchable sexually-but insatiable and controlling of others sexual fantasy or thoughts as porn does nothing fulifill this. Barf to Obama and this Republican whack job who I would rather see making out with Oprah in a sensationalized over publicized upcoming episode on her (Oprah’s) failing cable channel- to help boost poor ratings.
Did I mention Bill (Monica didnt play with my dog)Clinton de-regulated the banks and our economy then collapsed years following, or that Bill Clinton also turned radio stations into a joke after removing radio anti-trust laws? Now we have the same song and dance routine on repeat incidently the music business has also COLLAPSED. Liberals are an abused and used bunch of gullible people, easily toyed with. REVOLT!

I think you all, James and Doug especially, are underestimating how much Bachman rallies the base of the GOP. She IS the base. If she wins Iowa, which she will, and pulls off an upset in New Hampshire, which she can, she then easily wins South Carolina and Nevada.

If that happens, who will stop her momentum? Who does the GOP elite galvanize around if it’s obvious Bachman will beat Romney? Where is Romney’s firewall?

She’s crazy- I can’t believe that she agreed to keep in place a piece of legislation that was passed overwhelmingly by both parties and signed by the President and is popular- what kind of a nut is she that she would support a version of marriage that has been used successfully for hundreds of years! And she wants to ban porn too- she actually wants to keep illegal depictions of lewd behavior away from people- the horror! Doesn’t she know that the first amendment says “Government shall promote porn in society”? She’s crazy.

@Timothy Watson: Yes, but not until after the Nat Turner rebellion. A series of such enactments followed the rebellion. Most people don’t know, though, that the immediate effect of the rebellion was a move among whites to manumit the slaves at state expense and return them to Africa. This movement gained a very large following, including among slave owners, and was even introduced into the legislature, but failed. Then the harsher measures were introduced and passed.